Casual, My Way
by redladylove123
Summary: Zoe and Wade negotiating the rules of the "casual" game.


**So I haven't given up on my other H.O.D story yet, but had to take a little break from it to brainstorm a bit. This is just kindof a collection of ideas I had of some moments between "Casual, my way", and "be my real boyfriend."**

 _ **Zoe:**_

She would rather get eaten by Burt Reynolds than admit how many times in the last hour she just walked the path through the brushy woods to the other side of the pond, and then turned around halfway and went back to her place. Calculated risks, that's what she told Lavon. She takes calculated risks. Because risks have consequences. And this is a big one.

 _I should have had one more glass of wine first,_ she grumbles silently to herself as she climbs the steps to the porch of the gatehouse.

She doesn't really know how she's expecting him to react to what she has in mind. I mean he's _Wade._ Her own jealousy surprises her. Last night seeing him with that blonde and that girl at the Rammer Jammer had turned her into a complete whackadoo. She sees him hit on girls all the time. But now it's….all different, after the night of George and Lemon's non-wedding.

She wonders if she even has the right to be mad. There's no agreement or anything. I mean they're not _dating._ He drives her crazy, with all his Wade-like habits and smart-ass comments. He knows which buttons to push.

And how to push them a little too well, lately. Like several times a day.

Her face flushes at the dirty thoughts that skate through her mind, and she closes her eyes.

 _Get a grip, girl!_

Before she can chicken out again, she raises her hand and knocks on his door.

When you throw sex into the equation _everything_ is different.

Time to make some rules.

 _ **Wade:**_

"I was wondering if you can do casual...my way," Zoe is saying cautiously, standing on his front porch, wringing her hands. "You know like….monagamous. Casually."

He hears the words that come out of her mouth, but they sound a little different to his poor fool heart than to his ears. The little seed of hope that was planted a long time ago grows three sizes as she says all that stuff he barely hears, because his brain has turned it meaning only one thing:

She's saying she no one else. No one else for her, no one else for him. Oh sure, there's all that crap about "not dating", but he doesn't hear that, or his brain pretends he doesn't. He'll worry about that later. All that he hears is Zoe wants to be in his bed. Zoe. In his bed. Many nights for the unforeseeable future.

Casual isn't a new word for him. I mean he _lives_ in the casual zone when it comes to the female variety. He doesn't call the next morning. Half the time he doesn't even ask their last names. He doesn't know what they want to do with the rest of their lives, or where they go home to the next morning. No strings, no romance no expectations.

But it's different with her. It's been different since the moment she climbed into his car on Miller Road. There hasn't been a second she hasn't been in the back of his mind since.

"Do you even know what monogamous means?" Zoe asks, only half kidding. Because he _is_ Wade and his reputation proceeds him. "No hot blondes. No socks on the door."

"Yeah," he says with a half smile, leaning in the doorway. "I think I can do that." And yeah, he knows that word. It usually initiates a face like he sucked on a lemon whenever it drops from his mouth. Somehow this time it doesn't sound so bad.

Casual "her way" is a new ballgame. It's probably going to be a lot of work. And it's probably going to end bad. Really bad. I mean she's clearly still got a thing for George Tucker. And as Tansy has reminded him 100 times, girls like Zoe Hart don't end up with guys like him.

And still, he doesn't even have to think twice when he opens the door and gestures her inside.

 _ **2 weeks later….**_

Zoe is still asleep, wrapped up in the blankets she regularly fights him for in the middle of the night, when Wade wakes up and goes to work painting her walls. This job should have been done awhile ago, but somehow he keeps getting…distracted.

He gets into the task for awhile, wearing his headphones, covering the ancient walls with the apparently "sophisticated" gray paint she chose that he thinks is kinda boring, and singing along to Blake Shelton. After a bit, he turns and finds Zoe sitting up in bed among the pile of quilts, watching him with an amused smile. She's wearing one of his tshirts he left here, and her hair is a disaster.

And she's the hottest thing he's ever seen.

"Morning, Sunshine," he says wryly as he takes another swipe at the wall.

Zoe yawns and climbs off the bed, heads directly for the coffee maker. It shouldn't short any fuses out this morning, considering well…he's _here_ for the third morning in a row and not powering up anything at his own place. Some nights they spend at the gatehouse, but she put her foot down this week until he cleans his bathroom.

"Is it morning? Didn't we just go to bed like 3 hours ago?" She smiles a little to herself as she puts a cup underneath it and hits the button. Yes indeed, neither one of them have been getting much sleep in the past couple weeks. She fills the cup, then sets it aside and grabs another one for him. Then she hoists herself up on the edge of the table and crossed her legs as she sips her coffee and watches him paint.

"You like watching me do all the work?"

"You bet I do. It's kinda hot, actually."

Wade drops the brush in the bucket, painting completely abandoned, distracted by the fact that his tshirt comes just to the top of her thighs, and shows enough of her black silk underwear to make him want her all over again.

"You know what else is kinda hot?" He says as he crosses the room and stands in front of her, pulling her in by the edges of the tshirt, her knees on both sides of his hips. "You in this shirt, doc."

Zoe raises her eyebrows and sets her coffee cup aside, then wraps her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck and leans back to look up at him, her dark brown eyes laughing. "This table is never going to hold both of us."

"Guess we'll see about that." They're all over each other in an instant, like its been days instead of just a couple of hours.

Zoe marvels over the fact that nobody has ever told her casual sex could be _this good_. That once you had it at your disposal, you'd want it _all_ the _time…_ …

##############################

"You're right, under the table is better than on the table." Wade says as they lay on their backs on the wooden floor a little while later, both trying to catch their breath.

"This is so great, isn't it?" Zoe laughs, leaning up on her elbow to look down at him. "No strings, no expectations. I don't have to obsess if you're going to call the next morning."

"I don't have to call," Wade says enthusiastically.

"I don't have to hear about your day, or worse, your car," she adds.

"I don't have to ask you about your new shoes or what you ate for lunch."

Everyone should be as casual as them, Zoe thinks as she sneaks a peek at him, looking all happy and naked-y over there next to her on the floor. Cuz no expectations. Once you took all that away, she realized, it was so much _easier_.

The world would be so much happier if more people were like them. Just casual.

 _ **4 weeks in….**_

It becomes a new normal, this thing they have going on and the little habits that come with it. A month in, and they're walking into each other's house without knocking. They don't do romance. They don't do dinner, or movies, or any of that relationship-y stuff. They do takeout, and late night tv or movies on the couch. And sex. Lots and lots of sex.

Zoe is getting ready for work when her phone rings. "Oh hey, AB." She says, rushing around looking for her car keys. She curses under her breath as she trips over one of Wade's boots laying next to the bed. "Dammit, Wade." She mutters, and tosses them into the basket of stuff in the corner that holds about 37 of his socks by now that she continually picks up, as well as a variety of other clothing items and video games. Because well, he's Wade and his crap is everywhere. So he has a basket now at her place. A basket is okay, she thinks. Because it's not a drawer, and a drawer is like… boyfriend stuff. So it's a basket. And anyway, she has one at his place too, after he complains about her bras hanging in his bathroom.

 _"Seriously,"_ he says one day when she comes into the Rammer Jammer. _"You gotta stop leaving your…unmentionables hanging in my bathroom. Meatball comes over and he's convinced I have a secret life, if you get my drift."_

 _She laughs so hard she almost spits out her wine._

 _"I'll stop leaving my underwear in your bathroom when you stop leaving your socks everywhere."_

 _"Fair enough."_

"Zoe?" Annabeth is still on the other end of the phone. "So do you want to have a girls night tonight?"

She finds the car keys on the table next to the bed with a day's supply of Cheeze Flavvys, 2 energy drinks, and a note that says her car is gassed up and ready to go. And she melts a little. He _can_ be sweet. When he wants to. He knows she's got a long trip ahead at the hospital in Mobile with a patient and will be back tomorrow afternoon. "AB I can't. I have a patient going in for a minor heart surgery and I really feel like I should stay with the family. I won't be back until tomorrow."

"Well tomorrow night then," Annabeth says cheerfully. "We need some girl time to catch up. And eat pizza. Because you know, Lemon doesn't allow us to eat pizza, and that is my secret vice lately. Oh, and paint our nails and talk about boys! It'll be so much fun."

Zoe bites her lip as she's pulling the door behind her, walking outside. Across the pond, she glances at Wade's place ruefully. There's no signs of life and she knows he's already probably at the Rammer Jammer. They've been short-staffed all week and he's been working double shifts, and she's been busy at the office, which means it's been a week limited to lunch break and storage closet escapades.

Not that they don't thoroughly enjoy those too.

"Um….okay." Zoe says, trying to sound enthusiastic. "I'll meet you at your place at 7."

"You know what, why don't you just meet me at Lavon's? We'll kick him out and use his kitchen. I have some baking to do for an anniversary party on Friday."

"Okay," Zoe laughs. "Sounds like a plan."

The trip to Mobile seems to last a week instead of a mere day. Her patient's surgery was a success, and by the next afternoon he is out of ICU, she has left the family feeling confident everything will be fine, with the promise to check in again in a few days, and heads back to Bluebell, anxious to get home.

"Hey," she calls Wade from the Bluetooth as she's driving. "How's work?"

"Busy night, I can't talk long," he says. "There's a bus full of tourists just pulled up and it's about to get crazy. How was the surgery?"

"It was fine. A little scary coming out, but he's fine. He'll make a full recovery. Glad we caught the condition when we did though, or it would not have been a happy ending."

"Good to hear, nice work doc. You on the way home?"

"Sortof," she sighs. "I told Annabeth we'd have a girls night, though. She's going to meet me at Lavon's. But I might need someone to walk me home through those big scary woods later," she added.

"I might be done with work about 11:30 and wander over there. Coincidentally and all."

"Sounds like a plan."

"Drive safe. You're not driving home half asleep, are you? Got coffee?"

"I'm fine," she says, smiling a little in the dark car as she drives, thinking it's kinda nice to have someone ask about your day. "See you soon."

##############################

Hanging out with Annabeth in Lavon's kitchen, Zoe is antsy, watching the clock the whole time.

AB isn't dumb, she knows something is up. "What's going on with you?" she asks as she takes the cupcakes out of the oven. Annabeth does most of the baking, Zoe just watches and supervises. And empties the wine bottle.

"Nothing," Zoe fibs. "I'm just really tired. That trip wore me out."

AB puts her hand on her hips. "You're not fooling me," she shakes her finger. "It's a guy, isn't it? You keep looking at the clock."

Zoe can feel her face flush, and not just from the wine. It all kind of spills out then, the thing with her and Wade. The rules they made that have already been 90% broken. The fact that she thinks they're overstepping the casual line lately, and what the hell does that even mean?

"You need to talk to him," Annabeth says firmly. "Like actually talk without sleeping together."

Zoe rolls her eyes. "I don't think that's possible."

"Well what are we doing here, then?" AB says, throwing her hands up and untying her apron. "To the Rammer Jammer we go. I'll referee."

"We don't have to," Zoe shakes her head. "I mean, this is supposed to be our girls night." But it's easy to see she's torn.

AB's face softens. "You have a problem, I think . A big one."

"I know," Zoe says, covering her face her hands. "I'm a sex addict. Me! I don't know how that happened. It's his fault. Two days without it and I'm going stir-crazy. It's embarrassing, AB."

"That's not your problem." Annabeth shakes her head. "Because it's not the sex you miss. It's the guy you're having it with."

Zoe pauses in draining the rest of the wine bottle into her glass, and sinks back down onto the counter stool. "Oh god, you're right," she says, stunned. "And that definitely is not in the rules."

###########################

Wade's pretty damn happy to see Zoe walk with into the Rammer Jammer with Annabeth a couple hours later.

She slides onto a bar stool and he pours her a glass of her favorite wine, the stuff from the case of bottles he hides special in the backroom just for her.

"Hey, Waaaade," she drawls his name.

"Hey Doc," he says, hiding an amused smile. "Where you been, haven't seen you in a couple days." _Haven't seen you naked in a couple days,_ his eyes say _._

"Mobile. Patient surgery," she said casually. Like he doesn't know.

"Kinda quiet without you around here."

AB, sitting next to Zoe and more than a little tipsy, snickers at watching the game they play, now that she knows everything. The way that they look at each other across the bar is enough to set the walls on fire. "Well, this is just so cute."

Zoe elbows AB to keep her from giving something away. All they need is Dash putting it in the blawker or something.

"You told her?" Wade raises his eyebrows at Zoe. To be honest, he doesn't give a damn if anyone knows. It's her that insists on keeping it on the DL. Probably so George Tucker won't find out, which leaves a not so nice taste in his mouth even thinking about it, but he pushes the thought away.

"She guessed," she says, wincing.

Annabeth is giggling again, holding out her glass for a wine refill.

Zoe gets a text from Wade a few minutes later, even though he's standing 6 feet away. She tries not to smile, or meet his eyes, or they're definitely going to give it away.

 _Meet me out back in ten minutes._

She waits the allotted amount of minutes, and then tells AB she's going to use the bathroom, and slips out the side door.

Annabeth watches and rolls her eyes a couple minutes later when Wade yells to Shelly that he's taking a break.

"Obvious!" She calls. "Sooooo obvious."

Wade waves her off with a giant smirk and disappears through a kitchen door.

Him and Zoe find each other in the back of the building in the shadows, making out like crazy, like it hasn't been merely 24 hours since they've seen each other.

"I gotta close tonight," he says between kisses. "Wanda's sick, and Shelly's already been here all day. "I probably won't be done until about 3 A.M. You can have the blankets all to yourself tonight."

A little disappointment hits her, but Zoe brushes it off. They're casual. It's not like it's _mandatory._ "I should probably catch up on my sleep anyway," she says. "You've been keeping me up pretty late. And we should probably get back in there before AB outs us to the whole town. You go first. I'll wait a few minutes."

He lays one more kiss on her mouth that leaves her knees feeling like jello, and then heads back inside.

Lavon picks the girls up at the Rammer Jammer, gives AB a ride home, and drops Zoe in front of the carriage house.

Tired, happy, and a little buzzed, she puts on her pajamas and crawls into bed and tries to sleep. But it's not the same without him here, laughing obnoxiously at the late night skits on tv and crunching on potato chips. She can't sleep, even though she's exhausted, and tosses and turns for nearly an hour.

Finally she puts on her boots, throws a flannel shirt from his basket on over her shorts and tank top, and walks around the pond to the gatehouse. It's dark, but there's enough moonlight coming through the window that she doesn't even need to turn any lights on to crawl into his bed and close her eyes.

Wade gets home at 3:30 a.m, tired and smelling like spilled beer, and he knows as soon as he opens the door, before he even crosses the room, that she's there. Her presence is unmistakeable.

He kicks off his jeans, pulls his tshirt over his head, and drops it on the floor. Then he crawls into the bed next to her, pulls her tight against him the way they like to sleep, his front to her back, with the blankets tucked in around them. It took them awhile to figure it out, how you get used to sleeping with someone else when you're used to sleeping alone, but they got it now.

 _I like it this way,_ she told him a few weeks ago. _That way you can't hog the blankets._

 _Me? You're the one that hogs them, I wake up in the morning damn near freezing._

In the darkness, she stirs and smiles a sleepy smile and snuggles in closer to him.

"Hey baby," he kisses her neck.

Baby. That started a little while ago.

She likes it. When they're alone, when no one else can hear. When she doesn't have to be the tough New York girl. and she can be all marshmallow-y. It's probably against the rules, but she won't tell if he won't.

"Hey," she murmurs. "Kinda missed this the last few days."

"Me too," he sighs and closes his eyes.

It's supposed to be about sex, this arrangement they have. But this is nice too.


End file.
